Available on: Netflix
Streaming globally as of 17 October 2025
Duration: 1h 36min
Trigger warning: The film deals with violence, gun death, racial tension, and children in distress.
I love watching real crime documentaries, but I have not come across a new kind of documentary filmmaking that was different in the sense of the spectatorial role. Though most documentaries are based on real events using real footage, this film used police body cams to build the story and to describe the incident chronologically. I am talking about the film The Perfect Neighbour, which is a 2025 American documentary directed by Geeta Gandbhir.
This film is constructed almost entirely from existing body-cam, surveillance, and 911 footage — none of it was shot by the filmmaker herself. The whole story was developed by placing those footages in a chronological manner (with the call recordings and the voice statements from the witnesses and the people involved in that incident). Here, the work of the director was more like that of an editor-curator, stitching together sound material.
It tells the story of a real-life tragedy in a Florida neighbourhood that occurred on June 2, 2023, in Ocala, Florida. A woman named Ajike “AJ” Shantrell Owens was shot and killed by her neighbour, Susan Lorincz. Lorincz was a rental-property neighbour who repeatedly complained about children playing near her building, including AJ’s children. The conflict escalated over time through dozens of police calls, complaints, and confrontations. The small grievance eventually turned into a lethal outcome where Lorincz shot Owens through her front door, claiming self-defence under Florida’s controversial “Stand Your Ground” laws.
What is different about the film and what is different for us as spectators?
As I have mentioned earlier, the whole film is an arrangement of real police body-cam shots, 911 call recordings, and surveillance footage. So it is as if you have been given the role of a decision-maker. You are there as a vigilant observer, watching the whole incident from the first to the last — seeing their actual reactions and listening to the police interrogations. So it is on you to decide who was right and who was not.
Even though I was not able to lose attention throughout the film, two footages shook me to the roots and helped me understand the gravity and seriousness of the incident: one when AJ was shot — a door-cam footage of the neighbour opposite, where AJ’s young son came running and shouting, “My mother has been shot.” And the other was the final interrogation of Lorincz by the two detectives.
This type of filmmaking technique has been a new experience regarding our role as spectators. It pushes us from the role of a spectator to that of a vigilant body who judges and decides based on the footage and the arguments provided by the two.
There was a scene where one of the officers explained to the children involved about “devil’s advocate.” The term means someone who expresses an opinion they do not really hold in order to encourage a discussion about a subject. So it was deliberately kept and not edited out, as it was our job too, to play the devil’s advocate.
So, if you are into real crime documentaries and love a different way of storytelling that will make you think and judge, this is for you. You will love the investigation process and the way the police talk to the victims, the criminal, and the people involved. It might be because of the body cams, but you will see their real reactions, which were recorded and not edited out. Watching them behave with the irritating woman will make you question the police here and the way they behave.
The film works as a re-appropriation of state surveillance images to expose systemic failures and social injustice.
